Writing as Resistance – A Study of Subversive Strategies in Novels by Nina Bouraoui

This essay is aiming to find subversive strategies in the novels Garçon Manqué, Mes Mauvaises Pensées and Poupée Bella by the French-Algerian writer Nina Bouraoui. A subversive strategy is one that has the potential to cause change. It recognizes that something is wrong in society and then encourages us, like a conscience, to do something about it. While discussing what those strategies consist of I utilize theories by the philosopher Jacques Rancière. He defines politics as a battle of who is to be counted as a subject, whose talk is counted as speech rather than just as mere growl and whose experiences that count as a part of the common experiences. Literature is according to him political in itself as it creates new subjects and new, common worlds. Using this definition of politics and literature theory this essay identifies three different strategies in Bouraouis novels. The first strategy is about the author creating an alternative, homosexual world. While describing the lesbian clubs and places in Paris in Poupée Bella, where she’s depicting homosexuality as something natural and shameless, she is creating a lesbian universe, which I claim, is a radical alternative to the heteronormativity. Furthermore I state that Bouraoui, by writing about a lesbian, French-Algerian young woman, is letting new subjects in to Rancières political world. Writing as a resistance against racism also becomes a strategy. The narrator in the novels is defending herself from earlier attacks and is, at the same time, uncovering the racism she has been subjected to. She is depicting the history and the consequences of the Algerian war that lasts even today and she’s uncovering racism and oppression